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Bike delivery day

I love getting to haul anything with my cargo bike, but especially other bikes! A visiting Detroitian (Detroiter? Detroitster?) was put in touch with me by 30 Days of Biking director, Patrick Stephenson. She asked if I knew how she could borrow a bike and once I determined we were about the same height, I made plans to bring her one of mine.

I haven’t done a lot of bag-and-dragging of adult bikes since swapping Yepp seat for Hooptie and so far it feels like the bikes aren’t in there as snugly. But I had added a toe strap from down tube to the back of the Hooptie and the bike hung on just fine, even down a very steep and bumpy brick block.

Check out the beautiful weather today! Here’s the view to the west while walking my bike over the Fremont Bridge. (Usually one can bike across the Fremont Bridge, but the Fremont Bridge Painting Project has people on bikes dismount depending on what they’re doing, though usually just during prime commute hours.)

I had planned to swap Big Dummy for Little Strugger for a lunchtime ride with friends, but once I found out one of them was attempting to drag a bike to the shop, I decided to keep the cargo bike out in case I could help. Turns out my bike wasn’t needed–the ailing Batavus hauled the backup bike just fine!

Though my FlightDeck made a great bench for my friends while we hung out at Dutch Bike Co. The Little Struggler sure can’t do that.

And hey, check out the new batch of Bikecaps at Dutch Bike Co. I was disappointed by the selection of just camo and skulls back when I needed one for the Little Struggler and convinced them to expand their offerings. I’ve got dibs on the forest scene–just kidding, go get it!

We lunched on amazing sandwiches from Other Coast Cafe with DBC manager Devin and learned the story of this gorgeous Soma. It’s a three-speed direct-drive, so a fixie (more or less) with an internally-geared hub. The woman who ordered it five years ago developed knee problems and couldn’t ride it so it’s on sale. If you’re close to my height (5’5″) and it sounds enticing, go check it out! I’ve never been on a fixed-gear bike before and found it fun, but would need to do a bit more practicing on it before doing more than spinning circles around the shop.

I thought that was it for biking today, but the kids and I biked 1.2 miles together after school. We fell prey to the age-old free goldfish from kindergarten classroom ploy and had to get supplies. I’ve never had the kids ride their own bikes across the freeway, but they did fine sticking to the sidewalk (which is what I do when I’m on the slow family bike with them on board anyway) for the four busy blocks of 45th Avenue.

They insisted on riding one in front and one in back of me on the way home to be my lead and follow cars, protecting the oversized load that was the fish tank. Too cute. Yet also an example of just how much cars cars cars infiltrate our play.